CO-Horts

CO-Horts

Monday, November 20, 2017

Hydroponic
systems seem to be cropping up in different locations and in different venues throughout
Colorado.In Northeast Colorado, a
cooperative venture between Northeastern Junior College (NJC) and Colorado
State University (CSU) Extension was designed by Dr. Brent Young to “explore
the possibility of using intensive, high value, vegetable production as a means
to bring the next generation back to the family farm.In turn, this would also allow for the
creation of profitable small farms and provide locally produced, healthy food
for our community.”In this greenhouse,
in order to keep this hydroponic demonstration operation running smoothly, Dr.
Young and Brian Kailey with CSU Extension train and oversee three work study
students from NJC.

There are two systems that makeup the fresh food production in this NJC greenhouse hydroponic demonstration. The first system called Nutrient Film Technology (NFT) is a system, where the nutrient solution constantly recirculates through the system. The trays slope slightly allowing a film of liquid to travel down the tray to feed the plants. In the NFT system, they chose to start growing lettuce. Why lettuce? Lettuce is a crop that requires lowlight and low temperatures and for some lettuce types such as Bibb lettuce has a quicker turn around time for fresh food production. The down side is that lettuce is a perishable crop. The best types of lettuce for hydroponic systems are Butterhead, Loose Leaf, Leaf and Cutting. The four varieties of Salanova used in the greenhouse are listed as follows:

Salanova Red Sweet

Salanova Green Butter

Salanova Red Butter

Salanova Summer Crisp

According to Johnny's Seeds, "Salanova®
is higher yielding than traditional salad mix even though it is grown as single heads, the same way that head lettuce is grown. It's unique core structure allows fully mature heads to be easily cut into uniform leaves once harvested, increasing efficiency." There are many different varieties of Salanova which include both red and green, flat (oak) or frilly, crisp or butterleaf. This lettuce has more leaves than a standard head all uniformly sized and growing in a rosette pattern.

At this time, the NJC cafeteria has all their lettuce needs met for their current menu. This NFT system produces 72 heads a week.

NFT system, top left and plant nursery; Photo Credit: Young and Kailey

NFT system. Photo Credit: Young and Kailey

NFT system with Salanova Lettuce. Photo Credit: Young and Kailey

Finished lettuce. Photo credit Young and Kailey.

The second system is called a Bato or "Dutch" Bucket system. Vine crops are grown in these Bato Buckets. It is known as a "feed to drain" system. The delivery of nutrients is set on a timer for several times a day at short three to five minutes. In a Bato Bucket system, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers are grown. The varieties used are listed below:

Cucumbers:

Vertina F1

Corito F1

Tomatoes:

Golden Sweet F1

Rebelski F1

Peppers:

Sympathy F1

Sprinter F1

Currently with a 24 Bato Bucket system, they are projecting 10 lbs of tomatoes, 14 cucumbers and 12 peppers per week of fresh produce.

Bato buckets ready for planting. Photo credit Young and Kailey.

Bato bucket system. Photo credit Young and Kailey.

If you would like more information on this project please contact Brent or Brian as listed below:

Thursday, November 16, 2017

I don’t know about you,
but one of my favorite parts of the holiday season are the traditional holiday
houseplants that I always end up getting and giving as gifts. For most of us,
this time of year is crazy busy and more often than not, those cheerful plants
end up as cheerful compost food long before their time. Here are some tips for
making your holiday houseplants last to their full potential:

Generally speaking, large
houseplants in small pots dry out pretty quickly, so you should check the moisture
level of your plants daily. The soil should be moist but never soggy. If your
plant is wrapped in decorative foil, you should either remove it or poke holes
in the bottom of it so you have good drainage.

Good lighting will extend
the life of your holiday plants as well. Find a place for them that is well
lit, but not in direct sunlight. If you don’t have a place with nice natural
light, a grow light or a cool white fluorescent bulb combined with an
incandescent bulb can work as well.

Household temperatures
can also have an impact on the lifespan of your plants. Avoid places where the
plants will be exposed to hot or cold drafts. 60° F to 75° F is usually a good
temperature for most houseplants. Our dry Colorado air can make our holiday
plants lose cheer as well. You can use a humidifier, or place the plant on a
tray with pebbles and water. Make sure the water does not touch the bottom of the
pot.

Poinsettias are the
epitome of the holiday houseplant. To keep those colorful bracts looking great
for months, bright indirect light and frequent watering is key (but don’t
overwater!). You can keep a poinsettia all year and re-bloom it next season,
but it is quite the process and a different blog in itself. If you want to give
it a shot, you can find detailed instructions in CSU Extension Fact Sheet
#7.412. And one more thing, don’t believe
the myth that they are poisonous, they aren’t!

Christmas cacti are from
a group of jungle cacti and don’t look like our native cacti at all. These
plants can be very long lived when cared for properly. Let the top inch of soil
dry out between waterings. They can go outdoors in the summertime, but they
should be in part shade and should be brought inside when temperatures start to
drop. Fertilizing can be done in the spring and summer with a standard
houseplant fertilizer. You can help your cactus to re-bloom starting in
September by controlling temperature and the amount of light it gets. You can
find more information on this process here.

Amaryllis are beautiful
additions to the home during the holiday season. Provide them with bright but
indirect light, and keep the soil evenly moist. A cooler room temperature will
prolong flowering. Once the blooms die, remove them. Keep the leaves actively
growing through the summer. In the fall, you will want to cut water back until
the leaves die, and then you will store it in a cool dark location for a couple
of months. You can then resume watering and you will have buds in a few weeks! Click here for some detailed information on the process.

Norfolk Island pine trees
are nice houseplants and can be used in place of a traditional large Christmas
tree. They will appreciate a sunny bright location, and will respond well to
being rotated weekly. Water when the top inch of soil is dry, and try to keep
the humidity up. These trees ideally like 50% humidity. Daytime temperatures of
60° F to 72° F are optimal, with nighttime temperatures being just a bit lower.
With good care, this plant can last all year long. Keep in mind, these are not
true pines and are not cold hardy in Colorado.

I hope you have been
inspired to be a great holiday plant parent, and maybe even to try and keep
some of this year’s plants for 2018. Happy Holidays to everyone.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Are tiny flies driving you buggy? Several kinds
are common indoors, so it’s really important to capture and identify them. It helps you figure out why they are there in the first place, how
long they might stay and most important - how to manage them.

The Small household recently had the un-delightful company
of fruit flies. I knew they were fruit flies because I’d captured a couple and identified
them.The insects are attracted to fermentation
odors, such as that found with over- ripe or decaying fruit, beer, wine and
sugary drinks. Fruit flies are quite small (1/16”), often have red eyes and are
very annoying!

I observed they seemed to be concentrated around the ripening
bananas on the kitchen counter. “Okay,” I thought, “once the bananas are gone,
they will be too.” I even took the peels outside immediately after eating the
fruit, thinking that would quickly decrease the fruit fly population. Nope!
Bananas gone, still finding fruit flies.

Next I constructed a funnel trap. This consists of a jar
with either cider vinegar or a piece of ripe fruit in the bottom. Set a funnel (metal, plastic or one made from
a small piece of paper) over the opening to the jar, narrow side down. Make
sure the outer edge of the funnel fits the opening of the jar fairly well. Then
tape the funnel to the jar along the junction where the two met. You don’t want
anybody escaping!

Fruit flies are attracted to the fermenting fruit/vinegar
and crawl or fly down the funnel to get to the prize. But then they can’t get
out and die, falling to the bottom of the jar. My trap worked like a dream – I was
trapping quite a few every day. My hope was that the trap would collect the
remaining flies (assuming they arrived on the bananas) and the infestation
would be over.

While the trap was in place, I checked for and wiped up anything
that looked like a spill from the pantry shelves, counter tops and refrigerator.
I was also fanatical about taking empty drink bottles outside to the recycle
bin right after consumption. I hoped this would reduce potential food sources,
but instead I had an annoyed family along with the fruit flies!

One day while hunting up a particular spice, I noticed an
odd smell coming out of a cupboard that I apparently hadn’t searched very well.
I’d caught a whiff a couple of times
before, but it was very faint. This time, it was stronger and so a more
thorough search ensued. Shoved into the far back corner in a plastic bag, I
found three small rotting potatoes. In addition to being disgusting, they turned
out to be the source of the fruit flies. After disposing of the culprits, it
only took one trap refresh to take out the remaining flies.

And now, there’s a new location to store and readily observe
the condition of potatoes so we don’t have unwanted company again. So far, so good!

Monday, November 6, 2017

Mark your calendars for the 3rd
annual Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference!This year, it will be at the Denver Botanic
Gardens on Saturday, Feb 10, 2018.We
will have two main tracks, filled with great speakers:New to Natives and Knows the Natives.Registration should be open Dec 1 at landscapingwithcoloradonativeplants.wordpress.com.We have sold out the last two years, so get
your registration in early (maybe Santa could give you a seat in the conference?)

And here is why it is so important to plant more natives:

A study from Germany just came out (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809)
, and it has scary implications for both insect populations and the entire food
chain.The authors found that in just 3
decades, flying insect populations in German nature reserves have plummeted by
more than 75% (as measured across all taxa by biomass). The authors state that
this “loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading
effects on food webs and to jeopardize ecosystem services”. The reasons for the
decline aren’t clear, but the pattern is consistent over a swath of western and
northern Germany, from the region around Bonn and Cologne to the countryside
south of Berlin.

The scientists speculate that climate change, habitat loss and
fragmentation (including agricultural intensification), and deterioration of
habitat quality may some of the prime suspects responsible for the
decline.

For you fellow birders out there, the implications of the loss of
insects to bird populations is more than a little distressing. Many bird
species eat flying insects for their entire life cycle, and almost all birds
(even frugivores or seed eaters) must raise their chicks on soft-bodied
insects. Indeed, the German environmental organization Nature and Biodiversity
Conservation Union (NABU) estimates that more than 25 million birds disappeared
from Germany over the past 12 years (about 15 percent of the country’s total
bird population), and while the causes are not well-studied, habitat loss
(including the insects that sustain them) is the most likely reason.It is not just limited to Germnay; we are
seeing similar losses to our bird populations- A study (http://www.ace-eco.org/vol5/iss2/art1/) by
Canadian biologists, published in 2010, suggests that North American bird
species that depend on aerial insects for feeding themselves and their
offspring have suffered much more pronounced declines in recent years than
other perching birds that largely feed on seeds.

Don’t despair, however. Restoring the bottom of the food chain by
planting native plants can do a lot of good. The effectiveness of planting
native plants is demonstrated by years of research by Doug Tallamy,
whose published work (http://www.bringingnaturehome.net/).
He has shown that native plants host many more caterpillars than non-native
plants, and that yards with more native vegetation host more native-bird
species. His work (and of course, that of his grad students) (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320717305153),
shows that yards filled with native vegetation offer more food for nesting
birds than non-indigenous species. Another study of suburban properties in
southeast Pennsylvania found that there were eight times more Wood Thrushes, Eastern
Towhees, Veeries, and Scarlet Tanagers (all species of conservation concern) in
yards with native plantings as compared with yards landscaped with typical
alien ornamentals.

The good news
here is that we can make a difference in our own backyards by adding native
plants. And there’s no need to be a purist. No need to rip out all of your
non-natives, just add natives!Also,
consider raising your tolerance level for insects and holes in your plants. For
the most part, these are not a problem, and rarely get to the point of needing
any action. And, viewed from a distance, it’s hard to see a couple holes. As
one person puts it, “if there aren’t holes in your plants, you’re not feeding
the birds!”I have many birds in my
most-native garden, and I never see intolerable levels of insects (probably
because the birds are eating them all). If all of our yards helped to replace
lost habitat and supported pollinators and birds, we may help reverse the tide
of extinction. That gives me some hope.